


reciprocity

by Wagandea



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon - Manga, Character Study, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Insomnia, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, POV Sebastian Michaelis, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-25 05:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagandea/pseuds/Wagandea
Summary: Primum non nocere;First, do no harm.If a remedy exists for Ciel’s troubled mind, it is far beyond Sebastian’s reach.
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 4
Kudos: 70





	reciprocity

**Author's Note:**

> Though this fic is non-explicit, please note that it's pre-canon, so Ciel is ~11-12 here. Proceed at your own risk. (But I suspect if you're here you already know what you're in for!)

** ♚.**

“Haven’t you suffered enough?” his master says, and tonight he is listless and inconsolable, his hand hard and immovable where it cups Sebastian’s jaw. “Starvation must be an exquisite pain.” _ Yes, my young master _ , but it isn’t said and isn’t want to be said. Sebastian kneels between his legs perfectly still with his head held in his master’s hands, prostrate to a boy who has in him the fascination of some demanding old god. _ This is the sacrifice you gave and this is what you are owed; take my blessings and be grateful for it. _ Or as he is more like to say in these nighttime states: _ Just take it, Sebastian, I’m tired, I’m— _

Sebastian’s silence provides space for reason. Whether Ciel truly does want to break his contract on these nights, Sebastian does not know. He plays at disobedience either way, until Ciel’s grip on his chin tightens, fingernails digging into skin, then just as suddenly releases along with all the other tension in his small body.

His master lays down on the duvet, eyes turned dully up to the ceiling. Another sleepless night unless, _ unless_. Sebastian hums low in his throat, and crawls up between his master’s legs.

“Answer me when I’m speaking to you,” Ciel murmurs, as his fingertips skim the flyaway hairs at the crown of Sebastian’s head.

And the answer is always: “Yes, my lord.”

If Sebastian retreats, after a lingering closed-mouth kiss and leaves longing in his wake; that is neither here nor there.

** ♚.**

Worse than the nights his master sleeps too little are the ones he sleeps too much. 

“Have you not suffered enough?” Sebastian asks him, with a weight around his mouth and his eyes downturned and dull in the candlelight. Pity is a learned emotion and an acquired taste. He finds often that he does not care for it, but it is drawn out of him regardless during long nights in his company. And Sebastian’s master is inconsolable, and Sebastian’s master is a wretched monstrous creature far beyond help. If a remedy exists for Ciel’s troubled mind, it is far beyond Sebastian’s reach.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” But Sebastian does not reach his clawed hand out for the turned back of Ciel’s head; the thing is still not his to take, whether by contract or personal unwillingness. “I’m tired, Sebastian.” A request; not an order.

Truly, Sebastian does not know how to solve this problem, of all the difficulties his little lord has presented him with. He presses his palm, soft and human, to Ciel’s hot forehead. Feverish, sick in the head with his nighttime affliction, warm enough to the touch that were he a man Sebastian might have been afraid to catch cold from that simple contact. 

He is half-lidded, his eye glossy. His head tips forward into Sebastian’s hand, cradled, safe. “You can have me,” he says, “if you want it.”

His master seldom speaks in anything but absolutes. Quietly, Sebastian thinks about propriety. He does not think of what he wants. If there was a way, to do this, without covering Ciel’s body with his own and holding him against the cold bedsheets—

His kiss is open mouthed now, tongue bitter with drops of reddish laudanum. Scraps of affection for consolation. Another kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth. “Good night, my lord.”

Sebastian finds, after he excuses himself, that these half-measures ensure Ciel does not sleep any more soundly tonight, and nor can Sebastian wash his hands of it.

** ♚.**

He visits the pharmacist often. There is no shortage of remedies for insomniac tendencies, merely a shortage of ones that work. Milk and honey, laudanum, chloralamide, his master grows sick of all of it.

And one night, Sebastian puts on his hat and traveling cloak, and steals away to the East End. Of the pieces Sebastian’s master keeps in his pocket, Lau is the longest-standing besides Sebastian himself.

He is also, perhaps, the one who is most want to be kept. Had Sebastian been a man, they might have been cut from the same cloth, him and Lau. The thought does not inspire confidence. Lau’s smile is easy and indulgent in the thick atmosphere of the opium den, and the whites of his eyes are sickly pearlescent through dark eyelashes and dark smoke. Holds the pipe between his lips like a prop, clove and tobacco in the well rather than his own wares. “How unusual, to spot a tamed creature without its’ handler. I _ do _ hope the Earl is well. Come sit with me, Butler, and tell me your troubles.”

And he does. Sebastian’s troubles, as it were, are rather more obvious than anticipated; Or perhaps they are simply a _ familiar _ state of being to Lau. (It makes something in Sebastian’s insides coil up and darken. He does not think on it.)

Lau cannot sell him peace of mind, for himself or his master. But he is, as he professes, a dealer of dreams.

When Sebastian takes the coins from his pocket, he finds them pressed back into his gloved palm. Lau’s fingertips are cold through the fabric, and his eyes are very dark. “Ah,” he sighs, voice high-pitched and fluttering, a lovely facsimile of inebriation. “This once it’s on the house, Butler. In sympathy for your Greek problem.”

Sebastian pockets the opium quietly, and finds when he prepares the tincture himself that all Lau has sold him is temptation.

** ♚.**

There is a particular affliction of men, a preference or perversion. The Greek problem Mr. Lau mentioned was not isolated to the Greeks. As a demon, his hellish morality (or lack thereof) does not balk at the notion.

As Sebastian Michaelis, soft and human-skinned, less monstrous than his master, he feels ill himself. He tries to imagine the boy older; sharp-jawed, brand faded and stretched taut over the skin on his back, and perhaps he would look just like his father, as Sebastian has seen him in few faded portraits in the dusty recesses of the manor. Sebastian finds his thoughts drawn back instead, these slim hips, these childlike limbs. His master has not grown in the two years since they have met.

He wonders if Ciel could ever be ugly to him.

(Per his contract, Sebastian is not permitted to harm him, nor let harm come to him. He has a thought to roll the opium into pills like candy drops, sapphire-blue and bitter to swallow.

He stirs it into the milk his master calls for instead, drips honey into the cup and kneels between Ciel’s legs, patiently. It’s an offering of the wrong sort. Ciel takes the cup without questioning it, though he must know, and so Sebastian has not lied. Their contract intact, Sebastian places a kiss to his master’s brow after the mixture has set in, and tonight he is spared that ever-plaguing “yes, my lord.”)

** ♚.**

Sebastian understands, on nights he is called to his master’s bedside, that he is trusted and that his trust is being tested. This is a blessing. In that respect, the boy who is not Ciel Phantomhive is deified, his moods and whims as mercurial as every God who has walked before him. Sebastian has walked a fine line in keeping his favor, and lately has taken to defying it. This has not gone unnoticed.

The sacrifice he must pay, tonight: “Lay down with me.”

He hears the hesitation in it. These childish whims, these unspoken pleases and thank-yous, leftovers of a temperament too soft for what Sebastian knows Ciel to be. It takes time. Sebastian bites his tongue, and pays his tithe: “Yes, my lord.”

He knows the way this early-morning wanting will go, knows what it is Ciel desires but dares not to issue orders for. (“_Let me touch you,” _ his master will command, some months and months forward from this moment and this dark bedroom.) Pity is an emotion Sebastian is well-acquainted with now; _ love _ and _ care _ are others he is still getting to know.

Ciel’s body is small and cold between the sheets. To do as he is told implicitly, _ be a good boy_, stretch a gloved hand for the understated curve of his hip, is beyond Sebastian’s reach. Per his contract, Sebastian is not permitted to harm him, nor let harm come to him. He does not trust these human hands, these human intentions.

It is safer and kinder for the both of them if he allows something unsightly to unfurl in the darkness of that cold bedroom instead. Ciel has never balked at the sight of his demonic form. It’s only natural that his master should lay, quiet and still, as those tendrils of black nothingness curl around his limbs and inch up his spine, Sebastian covering Ciel’s body with his own and holding him against the cold bedsheets.

Ciel exhales softly into the pillow beneath his head, the hold of whatever nighttime terror has afflicted him releasing its hold in favor of Sebastian’s; and for his part, despite his careful consideration Sebastian finds that something has been taken from him regardless.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://wagandea.tumblr.com/)


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